Thursday, August 10, 2017

Should Leakers of Climate Report Be Punished? They Deserve to Be Thanked!

The facts have been clear now for some time.

Indeed, study after study has been conducted, and calls for more research have always been met with still further confirmation that not only is the planet warming, but that this warming is indeed linked to human activity.

And time and time again, we seem to have high-ranking government officials here in the United States who try and either mock these findings, or undermine them, or both. These days, with Donald Trump serving undeservedly as president, we have both.

Many people have been shocked - Shocked! - by Trumps brazenness and crass approach to things as president, and perhaps this has been especially vivid when it come to climate change. After all, despite Trump's own denials of his climate change denial during last year's presidential debates, and despite the White House's recent acknowledgement that climate change is an undeniable reality, the fact of the matter is that he also proclaimed it to be a hoax invented by the Chinese, with the express intent of hurting the American economy. And since he said that, we have to then compare his actions to those words, because he still seems to think that, even if he now denies it.

This is the kind of unrelenting craziness and hypocrisy that this particular White House, with this particular president, has been known for.

Of course, it should be noted that it is not just this White House. It existed long before, including with previous presidential administrations, and it also existed outside of Washington, such as with Florida Governor Rick Scott, who perhaps gave President Trump the idea of censoring scientists who argue that climate change is real, because Governor Scott was the first high-ranking government official in modern times that I know of who tried to censor scientific reality and consensus by officially censoring any mention of climate change by any government official. Trump has wasted no time in imposing a similar ban on the national level, and with his announced intentions of withdrawing the United States from the Paris Accord, he clearly seems to believe that climate change just is not that serious of a problem. Let us remember that China hoax comment, as well as the numerous times that he seemed to mock climate change during last year's campaign, sometimes going so far as to play the part of scientist himself, in explaining to his equally uninformed audience that the pollution that scientists talk about is overblown.

Once again, it is a situation where style wins out over substance, when someone with a big mouth and a tall soap box manages to drown out other voices trying to use reason and logic.

So, for all intents and purposes, there has been what amounts to a gag order imposed on any discussion of climate change by government sources since Trump became president.

Except for a recent leak. After all, we have never seen a presidency with quite so many leaks as this one. It is almost as if someone from the inside is trying to alert the American people to all of the ridiculous nonsense that is going on inside of the Trump White House.

Then again, when you elect a clown, you have to expect a circus.

This particular report is a summary of findings by scientists from 13 different government agencies, although they seemed to all agree on some particular conclusions.

This report was not leaked in the conventional manner, however. In fact, it was available for some time, although the New York Times recently published it, making it explode onto the public scene. A draft of the report states:

“Evidence for a changing climate abounds, from the top of the atmosphere to the depths of the oceans.”

The report goes on to suggest that there have been thousands of reports by tens of thousands of scientists around the world, and that they consistently draw the same inescapable conclusion:“Many lines of evidence demonstrate that human activities, especially emissions of greenhouse (heat-trapping) gases, are primarily responsible for recent observed climate change.”

That's right. Whether or not President Trump, or Governor Walker, wants to hear it or not, and whether or not they try to silence any serious discussion on climate change, the fact of the matter is that there really is no real debate here. Climate change is real. It exists. It is not some hoax invented by the Chinese, although it was caused by human beings. More specifically, it was caused by human activity, and if we do not curb these kinds of activities, then climate change will grow worse, and will indeed become undeniably the biggest problem that the world faces.

Now, here is where I will get on my own little soap box for just a minute. As a high school student back in the late 1980's, I remember the "debate" about climate change basically consisting of this kind of scenario: scientists would warn people that there was something called global warming, and that human activity was linked to this warning, and so we human beings had better curb those behaviors responsible for the warming, specifically by reducing carbon emissions. And the response was usually laughter and mockery at the very idea of anything called "global warming." Many wits, like Senator Inhofe, would mock it by pointing out that we still have cold days, that winter still always comes every year, and that we can indeed pick up snow and make a snowball, and perhaps even bring that snowball into the halls of Congress to score political points by seeming to checkmate advocates of global warming with this irrefutable proof that the world still had snow, and insinuating, of course, that it was not all that warm at all. But they stopped laughing a long time ago, because indeed, enough has transpired, that only the most ignorant would seriously still suggest that there is nothing to this whole climate change thing. Unfortunately, we have one such person in the White House right now, though.

Naturally, these types of people did not bother to take this issue seriously enough as to actually study it, to try and understand what scientists were saying. No, they were not saying simply that the world would just get warmer and warmer every day, all at once, and that cooler temperatures, or winters, or snow, would simply cease to be, would just disappear. No one suggested such a ridiculous thing, in fact, although that is what cynics would love for you to believe.

What scientists were actually suggesting was that global temperatures would rise, as they surely, undeniably have, according to all of the data available to us. Not one or two pieces of data, or one or two findings from researches funded by China, as well. No, we are talking about thousands of findings from thousands of researches. Time and time again, they concluded the same thing, and it was this: the weather around the world would grow more extreme. There would likely be more rains and flooding in some regions, and more severe droughts in other regions. Some areas could experience more severe winters and snowstorms, while others would warm up more. All of this would be the result of a global phenomenon.

Indeed, all of this has come to pass already, and is continuing. No scientists were saying that we will never see snow or winter again anywhere on Earth, although one wonders if this was indeed the case, if there would not still be parties with clear vested interests still going out of their way to discredit scientists pointing this out anyway. They were saying that things will continue to grow ever more extreme, and that, my friends, they did. We have seen more extreme weather events in recent decades, and with an alarming regularity, than ever before. We have seen tsunamis like never before, wiping out 150,000 people in one day. We have seen record heat just in the last two years in places as far away from one another as Australia, the Arabian peninsula, and the Mojave desert. We have seen record droughts in the west of North America and parts of Africa, and record flooding along parts of the Mississippi and some parts of Europe, particularly central Europe. We have seen storms of unbelievable strength, so-called "storm of the century" level storms, with increasing regularity. Here in the United States, Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans and the Mississippi Delta region, while Hurricane Sandy ravaged New Jersey and New York.

Have we forgotten already?

Do we really need a clown like President Trump (I still cannot take the combination of those two words seriously) claiming that all of this is one big hoax invented by the Chinese, and putting a gag order on anyone who dares disagree with his wisdom and monopoly on truth regarding these matters? After all, we surely know that Trump is the ultimate master of all trades, and an expert on every possible subject matter, so we should trust in him more than the tens of thousands of scientists who committed their entire lives to studying this field, and they have almost all come to the same inescapable conclusion, which is that climate change is real, and inextricably linked to human activity. And that is the key here, because President Trump desires more of the kinds of human activity that caused this problem in the first place, which is why he is opposed. He and others like him want to keep profiting from this pain that they are creating, and they do not seem to care all that much about the future. After all, they are old and will not be here for the worst of it, but they want to be able to make more money and enjoy their opulent, lavish lifestyles with the time that they have left here. So, we all must suffer for it, especially, and most tragically, our future generations.

Thank you, Mr. Trump.

Here's the thing: they were wrong before, so why do we want to put all of our eggs in their basket to crush, once again? Yes, they denied it was real, they even mocked scientists and other advocates who were trying to sound the alarm. They laughed, often literally, at the notion of global warming, or climate change, or whatever the hell you want to call it. They laughed that the labels were changed, even though it was changed clearly to try and help them to understand, because they only saw the surface title of "global warming" and did not bother to dig any deeper. It scored political points, and won elections. But it did not stop the reality of what we are facing. The storms came, the extreme weather came, and with it, a grudging acknowledgement by most, but clearly not all, of these deniers that, indeed, climate change was real.

Now, they debate whether it is linked to human activity, but they are no longer so quick to laugh.

This latest report was from a credible source- the United States government itself. Basically, it amounts to another leak. The Trump administration wanted to prevent the public from seeing it.

Yet, it became available to the public, and exploded into public view earlier this week, thanks to the New York Times
It refutes the Trump administration's climate change denial and censorship.

The White House wants to punish these and other leakers. But frankly, I believe that the people who released, or leaked, this report did a tremendous service by providing critically important information to the American public, and should be hailed as heroes.